Category Archives: General EM Law Topics

Publication Forthcoming!

We are proud to announce that our article “Operation Disaster Defender” will be published soon!

We are proud to announce that The Western Michigan Cooley Journal of Practical & Clinical Law will publish William Gribble’s (our Editor-in-Cheif)’s article entitled “Operation Disaster Defender: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Preserving Access to Justice and Client Property Through Disaster Preparedness” in Volume 19.1. This is a major milestone for Mr. Gribble as his first published work in a scholarly journal.

Below is an abstract of the article. If you are interested in viewing or discussing this topic of this article, feel free to reach out to Will via our blog.

With the livelihood of nearly 79,000 possibly at stake in the United States, shouldn’t preparing for a disaster be one of our top priorities as a profession? Additionally, the professional responsibility rules and civil liability will likely not be completely suspended during a disaster. This means that individuals could possibly face professional discipline or civil liability for failing to prepare for a disaster. Though this culture of preparedness is growing; what about our duty as leaders to preparing our communities? Would it be surprising to learn that there has been a gap in collaboration between legal and emergency management profession until it’s too late? Though some work has been done to help bridge this gap, more can still be done.

The Emergency Management profession has developed–and routinely updates–emergency management accreditation and certification programs that are mirrored in industries both domestically and internationally. Incorporating these established programs within the legal community will allow the profession to have a solid foundation in mitigating professional responsibility and civil liability pitfalls following a disaster. Additionally, the tertiary effects of this program are likely to: (1) provide a ready and capable legal community who can easily understand and assist emergency managers and civic leaders with some of their most misunderstood legal problems before, during, and after a disaster; (2) safeguard access to justice after a disaster strikes; and (3) preserve client and third-party tangible personal property.

Here’s the latest on the DHS funding issue, mainly that there is not one any more. The budget was passed that will fund DHS through the end of the fiscal year. This means that funding will be available to FEMA and other DHS agencies. This is also a clean bill that does not restrict funds for immigration services.

So if you missed it last night, congress came through with a bill that was signed by the president that averted a partial shut down of DHS (it is partial because those employees which are listed as “essential” are still paid and have to work while others are furloughed). Before you start celebrating that we’re done with this issue and can move onto the next, the continuing resolution only goes for a week, then we’ll be in the same boat again. This is somewhat ok while congress figures out what it wants to do and the politics plays out (which I won’t be getting into), but lets play it straight. We can only do this for so long before we start seeing a reluctance of strategic level (federal and regional level) leadership within DHS agencies (mainly we’re concerned about FEMA here) to make any systematic changes or develop programs that might benefit the agency and the country in the form of disaster preparedness. Really the best thing that we can do in emergency management right now is to consider the 12-step program that we posted earlier this month (read the blog post and article here: http://emergencymanagementlaw.com/2015/02/12-step-program-emergency-managers/).

This article is a definite must read. I don’t think I have seen a candid view from a FEMA administrator yet on pending (or lack there of) legislation before. Granted, coming from the military, sometimes impacts are a little over exaggerated, but he definitely has a lot of substance to his thoughts. Ultimately, barring a large disaster, we should be ok in the short term because most of the state Emergency Management programs will continue to operate as normal. The issue will come in when we start running out of federal funds for the grant programs or the grant programs aren’t renewed towards the end of the year. I’m fairly confident there will be a resolution by then though.

Governor Abbot is delivering his first State of the State (Texas) address today and is expected to put roads, education and boarder security as some of his biggest issues. It doesn’t seem like emergency management is necessarily one of them. However, we saw big evacuations away from the gulf coast during several hurricanes. This caused massive use of Texas Highways. We’ll do a recap in the next few days and break down the issues that may effect emergency managers as Gov. Abbott fully takes the helm as governor in Texas.

This article is a perfect reason why law matters so much to emergency management. In this case, Pennsylvania’s Public Safety Emergency Telephone Act allows for a cost sharing method for financing local 911 systems. The act authorized $1.50 surcharge monthly for land line telephone subscribers and $1.00 surcharge monthly for cell phone. With the move of many telephone service subscribers from land lines to cell phones the fund began to lose money and is to the point that it needs to be reworked completely in order to keep up with the demand and costs associated with keeping 911 systems operational and up to date in the state.

For our first post I decided that we should really answer the question: “Why concern ourselves with the Emergency Management Law?” Won’t everyone just understand that it’s an emergency and everyone will just give us a “bye”? Well, the answer is no, no one will really just give you a “bye” because there was an emergency. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and there are plenty of people that would be happy to sue because they were injured from the government’s failure to plan or prepare properly for the emergency.

It’s relatively obvious that since law (i.e. Texas Disaster Act of 1975, National Response Framework, ect.) developed formal Emergency Management into what it is today, the profession frankly can’t exist without having at least a working relationship with it. However, as Professor William Nicholson has identified, the relationship between Emergency Managers and Attorneys in the United States is one often characterized as “mutual ignorance.”(1) Just knowing statutes isn’t enough though. As counsel can readily point out, though we have statutes as a guide, the precedent that relevant case law is just as important to understanding what Emergency Management can and cannot do.

For example, Texas statute allows for “reasonable force” to be used to make people who remain in an evacuated area to leave, but what is “reasonable force”? (2) That, opens a whole new line of questions and answers that honestly, Emergency Managers aren’t expected to know. Police may have a very good idea of what is “reasonable force”. But does the “reasonable force” during an evacuation differ from every day police “reasonable force”? Why beat around the bush, just ask an Attorney! These are things that could expose city, county and state governments to exorbitant amounts of civil, and possibly criminal, liability and litigation costing the taxpayers a lot of their tax dollars. When Emergency Managers and Attorneys establish a healthy working relationship, these issues can be avoided altogether.

The whole goal of Emergency Management Law.com is to exchange information and ideas about how Emergency Managers and Attorneys can best work together to plan for emergencies, reduce risk, and improve the safety of our communities throughout the United States.